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http://www.germany-info.org/relaunch/business/new/ bus_tsunami_buoy_8_2005.html

General exceptions, in particular to the licence requirement for carrying weapons (Waffen­schein), apply in one's own home, business premises or fenced-in property; a legally acquired and held weapon may be carried in these places, ready to fire, without official authorization. This privilege also applies to the home, business premises or fenced-in property of another person (with their consent). A weapon may also be transported on unavoidable journeys directly relating to the purpose for which it was acquired. One may also fire one's weapon at licensed shooting ranges without a licence of one's own.
 
Under the general rules of criminal law, one may also fire one's weapon in self-defence, to defend another or if justified by necessity.

TFA says he

can produce what he calls the "bio-diesel" fuel at about 23 euro cents (30 cents) a liter, which is about one-fifth the price at petrol stations now.

Which is fine, but that's a meaningless comparison. In the United States, the tax on gasoline is a huge percentage, and I've heard that in some places in Europe, up to 80% of the money you're paying at the pump goes to taxes, and as little as 20% of it goes to the actual cost of fuel. If this is true, that obliterates his factor of 5 right there.

Can anyone in Germany comment on what percentage of the money that you pay at the pump goes to taxes? One site I found indicates the tax on diesel was 47.04 euro cents per liter in 2003 and 65.45 euro cents per liter on gasoline, but the chart on that site is hard to read and unclear.

But let's just assume that figure is accurate and compare things taking into account taxes. The article says it costs him 23 euro cents to produce a liter, and that regular diesel costs 5 times that much at the pump. That means you pay about 115 euro cents at the pump. If his biodiesel were subject to the same taxes, and if it were free to store it and transport it and there were no markup at all anywhere from manufacturing all the way to retail sales, then his biodiesel would be 70 cents per liter. So, what you pay at the pump right now is only 1.6 times as much as the minimum his fuel could ever really cost if it were sold at the pump, not 5 times as much.

Even when it is illegal to criticize the Chancellor's hair?

http://www.germany-info.org/relaunch/info/publicat ions/week/2003/031003/politics5.html

You're not talking about Africa, I'd guess. Most of the nations in Africa have low GNPs anyway, and they're not exactly trying to exert their influence around the world. They're trying to fight AIDS and keep their people fed.

You're not talking about Australia, as they're involved in the Iraq operation and had a military budget of $7.6 billion for 2003-2004.

You're not talking about Asia, as Russia, China and Japan alone had a combined military budget of $154.6 billion.

You're not talking about South America, as Brazil and Argentina alone spent a combined $11 billion on their militaries.

You're obviously not referring to North America, as the US alone spent $399.1 billion dollars last year and is continuing to spend billions more this year.

Maybe you're referring to Europe. Nope, that can't be right. After all, the military budgets of the top four European spenders (Russia not included) add up to $112.2 billion. That's certainly nothing like 0% of GNP. But maybe you were referring to the fact that European forces are never actually fielded in real-world operations.

Wait a minute. They actually ARE fielded in real-world operations. There are German troops in Afghanistan, and Norwegian troops in Afghanistan. There are British troops dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are Italian, Portugese, Polish, Ukranian, Dutch, Romanian, Danish, and other European soldiers in Iraq.

Their numbers pale in comparison to the number of American troops, but one wonders if the numbers would be higher had the Bush administration not bullied its allies into acquiescence on Iraq, rather than building a strong coalition the way the first Bush administration did. Perhaps the presence of forces from Germany and France, the most militarily powerful and politically influential of the continental nations, would have changed the overall calculus of the war.

But to say that Europeans are seeking diplomatic relevance without putting forth the force to back it up ignores the fact that many European nations are fielding units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many more might have been engaged had it not been for the brain-dead approach taken by the Bush administration.

All budget figures from the Center for Defense Information.

Martin Luther was a monk. Later in life he did marry. Shoot, there even was a Martin, Jr. I didn't think there would be!

Here I was going to go off on a rant and make fun of you're historical inaccuracy and how dumb you were, and you had the audacity to be right! Darn.

If I remember correctly the Chinese adopted LINUX because of the Open Source system which guarantees that there are no CIA,NSA... etc... back doors in the code, and even if there are backdoords a codereview will find them. One of the main motivations would thus have been that they did not trust Microsoft to stand up to the pressure to integrate backdoors for US security/intelligence services in their Windows dialects. Germany is following a similar trend. Although they keep ranting on about cost cutting, word has it, that a condsiderably larger part of the real reason than the German Govt. would like to admit in public is a desire for increased security. And Germany is not alone in this either, I suspect that more countries will take a second look at LINUX now that G. W. Bush Jr. is in the White House ensuring that the worlds trust in the USAs trustworthyness has reached a new low point. It would appear that the xerox spycam episode and how it was used to spy on enemies as well as allies has not been entirely forgotten after all. You can of course gripe about this being ancient history but there are more recent examples, such as the NSA abusing the ECHELON system for industrial espionage. Not that I as a European am pissed about this sort of thing, we do industrial espionage over here too. It is a grand old tradition as old as humanity and occasionally we over here in the old world even manage to sc*ew US companies in the b*tt just like the US Govt sc*ewed Airbus. I bet you are now tempted to write me off as an anti Microsoft NUTTER, but I fail to see why we should make it easy for the USA to sabotage our industry or read our private files off our hard disk. Lets face it, it is alot harder to keep the NSAs nose out of ones data with M$ Windows (notice I put the fashioable $ sign in the Microsoft ancronym) than it is to protect ones privacy under LINUX.

Why not move the server to Germany? At least there you'll not get persecuted as much... Or even Belgium, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Span, Israel and Mexico? Germany-Info has more info on that. But it's really funny to see all the Scientologists' propeganda against Germany by doing a Google Search.